Olivia Murillo

Harry Potter! My favorite class discussion by far, we all grew on Harry Potter. Fantasy like Harry Potter is aimed at young adults and it helps them to navigate their changing world. The series is filled with complex moral issues, Dumbledore was a bad guardian figure but all Harry had and Snap being an abusive teacher towards him. A spiritual challenge to point is the idea of predetermined fate, Harry had his entire life planned and overseen by Dumbledore, much like current young adults with their parents.

Okay so at this point who hasn't seen Star Wars, or least even heard of it. Everyone knows its THE space opera, its action-packed, full of high-key fantasy sequences, and even a little spiritual. So reading The Martian was definitely a change of pace. It's slow, dramatic, and you bite your nails a bit just waiting in anticipation and worry if the main character is going to get out alive. He spends all his moments carefully trying to just basically make it out alive, or live as long as his resources allow him too. It's not really like Star Wars, but it still captures you with its drama and that's enough for me.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, have you seen it?! Immediately when the words satire and sci-fi were mentioned I thought about this film. Besides Star Wars, I have had zero interest in sci-fi. It wasn't until one late night working in the computer labs that someone started playing the movie that I suddenly became interested. Yes, it's a superhero movie, but it also helps break down some sci-fi cliches/tropes that I have grown to detest. It's funny, it's engaging, and it helped me envision a future like it was presented in the film. It's a bit like Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, its satire and it just follows a human character with his band of alien companions, just navigating the galaxy.

I don't know how to envision the future in my lifetime, a part of me thinks nothing will change and everything will stay the same and people will continue arguing. I do however have hope for a future beyond my own lifetime, it's weird to truly think about it. Notre Dome burned and was destroyed just recently, and to have that occur in my lifetime was really weird. I can't really fathom the idea of something as impactful like that happening anytime soon. Though life is extremely spontaneous, and you never really know what can happen. No there won't be any flying cars, nothing crazy like that, but we are in what I believe to be an early pre-digital era, I say pre-digital because I know there's more to come in terms of technology and the way we consume media. Every year there's new phones, new apps, new books, new movies. It all keeps getting more and more impressive. I do know that the future in my life will be more artist-friendly. I read that a video game is goi

My first introduction with vampires was with the cheesy Twilight series, I was a preteen and oddly enough all I knew of vampire tropes came from pop culture. It sorta stayed that way for a while and reading Interview with a vampire was a bit of a wild ride. It for sure trumps as the best vampire drama. Comparing this book to something like....Twilight just isn't right. Anyways, I enjoyed this one because it was a true vampire drama that is done the right.

1. I was at first confused by the text, it was difficult to get an understanding of what exactly was going on and what/whom the characters were referring to.  I'm not a fan of reading and having to be given the little "clues" as to what is happening, but in this case, it worked. As I read on and everything was getting revealed to me more I was beginning to understand more and got a little shocked at the story that was being told.   2.  A connection I made was the concept of consent. I saw it occur as a theme. The main character is raised to be an incubator for the alien creature's offspring, against his own will. He is chosen as a baby and is lead to believe how "special" it is and it basically just being groomed into becoming compliant. In the end, he does make a choice to go through with the procedure, but because of the grooming he went through I don't think he was the one who made the choice. I connect with this because of how it relates to today,